Interview

What inspired you and got you excited about space?I am old enough to remember Sputnik , but

that wasn’t the real impetus for me. I was

born and raised in Las Vegas, and in my

early childhood the city was a strange place.

Scientists were working 75 miles away

detonating nuclear bombs above

ground. My friends and I saw many blasts

when we were kids – many mushroom

clouds, day and night. The other peculiar

thing was the frequent sightings of UFOs by

members of my family, as well as by friends

and their parents.

I got the message from all this that there

was a lot out there that we knew nothing

about, and the UFO reports made me think

that our rocket age must be very immature

compared to these other things that were

flying around. So I embarked on a lifetime

quest to get into space if I possibly could.

Rather than starting out as a scientist on my

own, I thought I might be able to do more if

I had financial resources. That was the main

driver for getting into the real-estate world,

where it is easier to make large sums of money

than, say, as an attorney.

At what point did you decide you were ready to go for your dream?When I turned 55, I decided I wasn’t getting

any younger and that I’d better start getting

really serious about this. I had enough money,

so I decided to start searching for the right

thing to invest in. I found out the hard way

that buying into other people’s companies

was not a good idea at all. Most of the folks

running small aerospace companies had

no business skills. They had never run

companies before, much less generated

a positive cash flow.

Then I came across a magazine article that

talked about NASA’s TransHab programme ,

aimed at designing an inflatable module

that would provide crew quarters for the

international space station, and I thought,

“This is a really slick invention, it has so much

potential.” Then I couldn’t believe it when

Congress decided to cut the funds and stop

NASA from pursuing the project. To cut a

long story short, I went after that programme

and we eventually acquired the licences that

NASA had. I founded my company in 1999,

although we worked for two to three years

without any licences and it didn’t really get

going until 2002.

You’ve emphasised that you are not in the space-hotel business. So what is your business about?Our business case is not based on tourism, nor

on servicing NASA. Tourism and NASA may be

a part of it, but they alone would not sustain a

robust business activity. We are looking to the

corporate world, to lease modules to major

companies. They don’t even have to buy them.

Our main focus will be on serving professional

astronauts and companies that want to do

laboratory research in space or ones with

other reasons to lease a module.

What sort of companies do you expect to be interested?It could be pharmaceutical companies, or

companies that offer services to hospitals and

clinics. It could be companies doing R&D on

nanotechnologies, or on all kinds of things. All

the services they need would be incorporated

into the lease agreement. Our own astronaut

group would provide a lot of the services that

the companies required on board, such as the

labour and maintenance.

Are you willing to lose some money to achieve your goal?I recognise that everything I have spent so far

and what I might spend in the future could

all be for nothing. I didn’t get into this to

make money. If I just wanted to die a well-off

individual and that was my only goal in life,

then I would have stayed in the businesses

ProfileRobert Bigelow graduated from Arizona State University in 1967 with a BSc in business administration. He made his fortune by founding the hotel chain Budget Suites of America in 1988. In 1995 he created the National Institute for Discovery Science to investigate reports of UFOs. He founded Bigelow Aerospace in 1999.

A Las Vegas real-estate billionaire with an active interest in the paranormal, Robert Bigelow might seem an unlikely candidate to transform the commercial space industry. Yet he is making an impact. In 2006 his company, Bigelow Aerospace, launched a small prototype inflatable space station into orbit around the Earth, followed by a second in 2007. By 2010 he aims to have full-sized orbiting stations available for lease to paying customers who want to carry out research in space. He outlines his vision to David Shiga, and explains how UFOs helped kick it all off

42 | NewScientist | 12 January 2008 www.newscientist.com

Shooting for profit on the final frontier

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that I have been in for 40 years. I would not

have ventured out. Potentially there is a huge

reward and earning capacity, but the risk is

enormous. So yes, I could stand to lose an

awful lot, but that is part of the recipe. If you

are not willing to take on that kind of risk,

then don’t be in the game.

Do you think you will go into space someday yourself?I would like to. I hope so.

What do you do in your free time?I read a lot. I go to some ranches that I have.

I like getting out in the desert and driving

around. I know this area so well: I have been

everywhere there is to go in southern Nevada

and parts of Arizona, so I don’t do that as

often as I used to. I used to go bird hunting,

but I don’t really do that any more. When I

started to deliberately miss my shots I knew

my time was over. But my work is my hobby –

aerospace really is my hobby.

How serious is your interest in the paranormal?I have been actively involved in paranormal

research for over 20 years. By that I mean

I have funded my own organisation and

other people’s. The paranormal basket is

quite sizeable. There are many subsets, and

each could consume an entire lifetime of

investigation. The UFO issue is just one of

them. I recently attended a talk on remote

viewing – the idea of being given a set of

longitude and latitude coordinates and being

able to determine what’s at that intersection

without actually being there. It’s a type of

psychic phenomenon.

Those kinds of subjects are fascinating

to me. They are not explainable in any kind

of normal scientific or medical context.

I have been fascinated by that for decades,

and have been closely involved in all kinds

of programmes. I was a director for a number

of years at the Rhine Research Center at

Durham, North Carolina. It really is a lot

of fun, and it’s another area of exploration,

as is space.

Is there any connection between that work and your space project?That’s an interesting question, and it’s a tough

one for me to answer. I would say possibly, and

I need to let that go as my shortest answer. ●

“I recognise everything I have spent so far could all be for nothing”

www.newscientist.com 12 January 2008 | NewScientist | 43

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